


A City on the Hill

by fire_is_my_happy_place



Series: A Darker Gotham [3]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: First Person, Mental Illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 11:03:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6563662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_is_my_happy_place/pseuds/fire_is_my_happy_place
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is left of a man torn between self-discipline and ideology?</p><p>The answer, of course, is not much. The answer is also everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A City on the Hill

Discipline is its own, very particular kind of hell. The routines, my routines, grow easier with time in many ways, but their demands only increase.

A party—I am the host, as always. A drunken sot, by anyone’s guess, too loud laughter and my arms curled on each side around women I’ve paid an extraordinary amount of money to be pleased to see me. The press has, no doubt, infiltrated the party. I didn’t invite them, but I did make sure to be extra lax when I hired security. Every picture they take of me, every half-chiding, half-envious article they write about my exploits, every ode they write to my conspicuous consumption is a part of my cover. It’s necessary.

Or that’s what I tell myself. It’s necessary for me to be here, in this smotheringly hot crowd, being groped by women who needed the money and listening to the slurred, obscene comments of people whose families are worth enough to let them buy humans like cattle without ever knowing what they’ve done.

I’m always a little afraid that the liquor I sip and spill will lead me to tell them what I’m thinking. I’m more afraid that not paying attention, or that I’ll finally be too tired of being disciplined and let myself go. Not in this crowd—if I indulge myself here, it will be to slap the brandy out of the hand of the mayor’s son and tell him exactly what I think about the way his father treats the poor in this city.

But some time, after I’ve been exhausted by pretending to laugh, pretending to be interested in the women fondling me, pretending to find the same joke about how stupid the poor are, or women are, or anyone who wasn’t born into this kind of money is… I’m afraid that one of these days, I will kill a man in an alley, a man no one would miss, and it will be the beginning of becoming one of them.

It would not be hard, nor would it take long.

The model to my right cackles with laughter, pressing her lips to my cheek where they leave a waxy smear. The model to my left has snaked her free hand down and is investigating my ass.

And me?

I bray laughter like the idiot I’ve gone to considerable trouble to appear to be, shit-faced and self-indulgent, messily kissing first one woman and then the other to the hoots and suggestive shouts of the crowd.

It’s all I can do not to hate them for being so… so selfish. So shallow and empty.

It’s all I can do not to hate myself. Yes, this party is necessary. Yes, I was born here, among them.

Even yes, I find it seductive. I long to let go, to let myself be swept away, even if only for a night. I want to pick one of the models up and spend a few hours surprising her with the violence of my need. I burn to empty a bottle and just be, just BE. Without the heavy burden of pretending. Without having to watch myself every minute, without fighting yet another invisible war not to let myself do something with the money, the training, and the power chance has given me.

And yet, it is cruel for me to think this, and unfair. What else have these too-old children ever had than the burden of trying to amuse themselves?

Judging them, judging myself. I am, but for a few tricks of fate, one of them.

And as one of the models pushes me back on the couch, straddling me and drunkenly giggling for the benefit of who knows how many cameras, I have to cling to the fact that this could be me and lie as hard as I can.


End file.
